"The war in
Iraq will ultimately cost U.S. taxpayers not hundreds of billions of
dollars, but an astonishing $2 trillion, and perhaps more. There has
been very little in the way of public conversation, even in the
presidential campaigns, about the consequences of these costs, which are
like a cancer inside the American economy."

How
are you feeling about your government's response to Hurricane Katrina?
The fact that the people who should have been there to help your desperate
neighbours instead are off killing and being killed in Iraq? Along with
all that equipment your taxes bought.

How
do you feel about oil prices? The fact that Exxon Mobile Corp, the world's
largest publicly traded oil company, reported a 32 % jump in profits during
the second quarter of 2005, while the rest of us dug deep into our pockets
to fill our tanks. And Royal Dutch Shell, with a 34% rise in profits?
Or ConocoPhillips, with a 51% increase. All of these in just 3 months!
Wouldn't you like to have a shot at that kind of investment?

Of
course, the guys who own your bank do. So do the folks you send to Washington.
And the ones who own Wal-Mart and K-Mart and Nike and the places where
most of us shop. These are the elite members of the corporatocracy, the
equivalents of the Kings and Emperors of times past. They are all benefiting
from the oil price hikes and – dare I say it! – from the tragedy
of Katrina. That storm will serve as another excuse for the oil kings
to whine and moan – and profiteer. As will their brethren who receive
the lush billion-dollar reconstruction contracts.

Who
else is making big bucks off oil – and Katrina? Well, let's not
forget the members of the House of Saud and the other families who run
the 7 “Persian Gulf Sisters” (Bahrain, Iran, Kuwait, Oman,
Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates). And, of course, Osama
bin Laden; he receives a great deal of money from these folks. Your gas-guzzler
finances Al Qaeda.

Now,
please don't misunderstand me. As an economist (remember I once held the
title of Chief Economist, even if it was an alias for EHM), I know that
oil is still way under-priced – if you factor in the costs of the
environmental damage drilling causes to places like Alaska and the Amazon
and the toll on our children of CO2 emissions that are threatening to
smother us (and undoubtedly are causes of the “once-in-a-hundred
years” hurricanes that hit every year now). We should all pay a
lot more to fill our tanks, we should drive cars that get at least 70
miles a gallon. However, the additional money should go to offset the
problems oil is creating for our progeny. Not to the Bush-Clinton crowd,
oil companies, and all their friends at the corporatocracy.

“Ah,
wait,” you may be saying. “Perhaps I would not want a shot
a that kind of investment. I don't care to be party to the destruction
of our planet. I don't want the blood of indigenous people on my hands.
Or the ruination of future generations on my conscience.”

If
you feel that way, then you must ask yourself whether you want people
who do make such investments to control your country, and your destiny.
Will you accept as your leaders men, and a few women, who are party to
planetary destruction, do have blood on their hands, and the ruination
of future generations on their consciences – and who seem entirely
comfortable with this? Is it in your best interest – or your children's
– to keep these rulers on their thrones? To continue to send them
your tax money. To sacrifice your sons and daughters – and those
of innocent people around the planet – so they may flit around in
private 747s and live in modern-day castles?

The
obvious answer is a resounding NO!

It
is time, my fellow Americans, to listen to the words of our Founding Fathers.
Profiteering without representation must go. The destruction of our world,
for the short-term benefit of a new type of royalty, is unacceptable.

Rise
up. Insist that we funnel our money to the victims of Katrina, the tsunami,
the 24,000 people who die every single day from hunger and hunger-related
diseases, and all the others who suffer while a very few of the very rich
make themselves richer.

File
lawsuits against oil and coal companies and government officials who continue
to cover-up the facts behind Global Warming – a toxic poisoning
of your children far more deadly than secondary cigarette smoke.

Together,
let's topple the throne of King Corporatocracy.

Katrina
+ Oil = Profits for Our Kings

John Perkins,
September 7, 2005

James R. Campbell : "Tax
Withholding for an End to Tyranny"

“Taxation without representation” is a good
working definition of tyranny. It is one Jefferson and the other signers of the
Declaration of Independence took seriously in 1776. And it is one we in 2006
must also measure our current political situation against.

In recent years it has become more and more
clear that our “democracy” does not work the way it purportedly does. The
values of most citizens are not reflected in the policies enacted by their
representatives – but corporate values are. The outcomes of our elections are
arbitrarily adjudicated, predetermined by gerrymandering, and entrusted to
virtually defenseless electronic systems with the flimsiest of oversight. The
values of “liberty and justice for all” embodied in our Constitution, and our
foundational respect for the rule of law are flouted by our President – and
Congress then “legalizes” his crimes of torture and surveillance retroactively.
Free and responsible disclosure of government actions is hindered in every way –
while the government covertly plants propaganda in the news media. When
citizens petition for full investigation of the acts of terror that impelled us
into wars of aggression, the government stonewalls any independent inquiry and
feeds us an endless pablum of conflicting and impossible “explanations.”

Because of these and other blatant and
insidious abuses of power, coupled with a manifest failure to respect or enact
the will of the people, there is apparently no longer any viable political means
for restraining or reversing these tyrannous encroachments on our fundamental
rights and liberties. Therefore, we must begin to exercise one of the powers
reserved to us under the Ninth Amendment and refuse to support the current
oligarchic federal regime with our tax dollars. To this end, payment of all
non-entitlement tax money should be withheld until all the following changes
take place:

·Recountable paper ballots with instant
runoff voting in all States

·Grand jury investigation of 9/11 --
with full subpoena powers and rights of referral to prosecutors for indictment

·Withdrawal of troops and bases from
Afghanistan and Iraq

·Reversal of the Patriot Act, War
Powers Act, and Military Commissions Act

·Withdraw from the WTO, GATT and all
“free trade” treaties that compromise national sovereignty (eg. NAFTA, CAFTA…)

·Impeachment of Bush, Cheney et.al,
followed by their prosecution in the World Court for war crimes

·Diversion of military budget into debt
reduction, alternative energy and social service sectors

·Convening of a truly
representative constitutional convention to consider the following (and other
appropriate) amendments introduced by citizens:

No privatization or delegation
of public powers and functions -- powers of war and of coining
money are inalienable

No purely speculative markets –
all holdings are investments for a year or more

No membership in secret
societies – the oath of office requires forswearing all

conflicting allegiances

No clandestine operations – all
foreign policy to be managed through

diplomatic channels subject
to full disclosure and review

In adopting this non-violent course of
resistance to the present regime we must recognize the danger of open reprisals
and general economic fallout: we must therefore undertake to support with all
the moral and financial means at our disposal – beginning with tax money held in
escrow – all those whose liberties or livelihoods are damaged by acts of
governmental retaliation or economic turbulence.

In addition to being willing and able to
support by local interventions those whose entitlements are diminished or
eliminated by government reprisals, a viable tax withholding movement must also
analyze and anticipate the general economic effects of gradual governmental
collapse. For instance, should the government default on all or part of its
enormous foreign debt, the fiat currency of the day will become next to
worthless, and will therefore need to be supplanted by locally issued notes of
credit that can be used to keep local commerce and industry functioning.

All in all, tax withholding will not be an
effective response to our political dilemma unless it exhibits two key
features:

1.It
must be a truly massive and confident popular movement

In order to be a self-confident movement,
the political reasons for tax withholding must be firmly rooted in widespread
ethical and religious values. For instance, both the ethics of solidarity and
of accountability condemn governmental malfeasance and should be used to
motivate people to act. Also, the tyrannous power of greed is condemned not
only through the voice of the Jewish prophets, “Ah, [woe to] you who join house
to house, who add field to field, until there is room for no one but you…[for]…
I will put an end to the pride of the arrogant, and lay low the insolence of
tyrants.” [Is 5:8] [Is 13:11], but also by Christianity “You can not serve God
and wealth …[therefore] …do not be conformed to this world …[or] …the kingdom of
God will be taken from you and given to a people that produces fruits of the
kingdom.” [Mt 6:24] [Ro 12:2] [Mt 21:43].

Building a critical mass of people willing
to withhold (or delay payment of) taxes should probably be initiated by public
discussion of the reasons for action and the options for withholding that are
ready to hand, coupled with an on-line survey question taking the form “I am
willing to withhold (or delay payment of) x% of my federal taxes if and when y%
of taxpayers are ready to do the same.” Standard techniques for confirmation of
email addresses could be used to verify the legitimacy of the data collected
on-line and prevent duplications. As results of this survey accumulate and the
tallies are posted, it would soon become obvious to all what the critical mass
is, and when each threshold figure is actually reached.

2.It
must be dynamically coordinated through a network of leaders

Coordination is possible without a command
structure, given an open flow of information and general agreement on a strategy
of graduated response to governmental resistance and reprisals. Thus, if the
first retaliation for a slackening of tax revenues is curtailment of entitlement
funding, a graduated response would entail increasing the percentage of tax
withheld (or delayed) to match the enlarged proportion in the budget of
illegitimate expenditures – that is, those known to be contrary to the express
will of the People, such as paying for wars of imperial domination.

Given the known proclivity of corporate
regimes for assassinating charismatic popular leaders – JFK and MLK for example
– organizing for tax withholding and mutual support should always be done at the
local level only. Many tax escrow funds will be less vulnerable than one; many
local organizations will be more difficult to derail than one national group.
Since most, if not all local groups will be infiltrated with covert operatives,
serious members must resolve to keep their focus on the real goals of the
movement, and to act in such a way that over time the hearts and minds of even
the ‘agents provocateurs’ are in danger of being won over.

The immediate goals of tax withholding have
already been enumerated: the ultimate goal is restoration of a constitutionally
based rule of law in the United States of America. Only when this is done will
the principles of justice, freedom and peace flourish here at home and empower
us to participate in an emerging global community based on cooperation and
sustainability.

"Ohio Governor Ted Strickland has a message for President Bush: any plan
to relocate to the US thousands of refugees uprooted by the Iraq war
shouldn't include Ohio.

The administration plans to allow about 7,000 Iraqi refugees to settle
in the United States over the next year, a huge expansion at a time of
mounting international pressure to help millions who have fled their
homes in the nearly four-year-old war.

Strickland -- a Democrat who opposed the war as a US House member --
says Ohioans can't be expected to have open arms for Iraqis displaced by
the war. More than 100 Ohioans have been killed since the war began. The
governor says he has sympathy for the refugees' plight, but he won't ask
Ohioans to accept a greater burden."

It is really all quite mad, isn't it?

That on top of the million or so Iraqis we've killed, and the four
million we've maimed, we've also created millions of refugees; that our
Maniac-in-Chief now decrees 7,000 refugees is a politically acceptable
number we should allow into the U.S. even as he continues the slaughter
around the clock; that the governor of a state, having absolutely
nothing to do with immigration policy anyway, feels compelled to protect
the homeland (or would that be "homestate?") by warning a morbidly
unpopular president, "Not in our backyard, pallie!"

Something for people of good conscience to keep in mind: When we finally
get our troops out of Iraq, and our bases out of Iraq, and our
mercenaries out of Iraq, and our spooks out of Iraq, and Halliburton
Corp., and Burger King Corp., and all the rest - when the last U.S.
helicopter flies off the roof of the world's largest embassy and the
American Empire's sorry, bloody, murderous adventure draws to a close -
we owe these people. Big time.

I don't know how many, or actually, why any of them would want to come
live in Disneyland. But if some do, we should welcome them and the many
lessons they could teach us about maintaining humanity in conditions of
pure hell.

For the 99.9% of Iraqis who would rather stay home and rebuild their
shattered lives, at the very least we owe them money. Lots of money.
Multiple billions of dollars. And not to be administered by our military
or our corporations or our mercenaries or our spooks. No, we should have
nothing to do with that money except deliver it to Iraq and let them
decide what to do with it. I hope they can rebuild the hospitals and the
electric and phone systems we bombed, and the water treatment plants
we've destroyed, and the economy we've wrecked. But frankly it doesn't
matter if they want to insulate their attics with it, or mix it with mud
and turn it into building material, or pile it up in the middle of the
desert and f.....g burn it all. They can't possibly do any worse with it
than we have.

And THAT is just the beginning of the magnitude of the dollar amount we
owe Iraq.

What we do for all the pain and suffering and heartache and terror we've
created, only God knows. Those things we carry on our conscience to our
graves.

And the governor of Ohio wants to be first in line to say, "Keep your
tired and maimed. Don't burden us."

"I will put the
taxes I owe in an escrow account. I will go to court to challenge the
legality of the war. Maybe a courageous judge will rule that the
Constitution has been usurped and the government is guilty of what the
postwar Nuremberg tribunal defined as a criminal war of aggression.
Maybe not. I do not know. But I do know this: I have friends in Tehran,
Gaza, Beirut, Baghdad, Jerusalem and Cairo. They will endure far greater
suffering and deprivation. I want to be able, once the slaughter is
over, to at least earn the right to ask for their forgiveness."

[We]are
rank-and-file, tax-paying citizens who are sick and tired of
out-of-control federal spending and deficits. [We] have had it with an
arrogant federal government that runs roughshod over both the
Constitution and the liberties of the American people. [We]
are people who have had enough of the IRS, the BATFE, and a thousand
other federal agencies that have "erected a multitude of New Offices,
and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out
their substance." (Declaration of Independence)